USA > Massachusetts > Biographical history of Massachussetts; biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, 1911, vol 9 > Part 22
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His father was able, enterprising and rather conservative and puritanical in disposition.
His mother was a woman of much power and dignity of character. In spite of her many family cares, she kept pace with the liberal movements of her day. She was an abolitionist, a founder of the Unitarian Church at Leicester, and a suffragist at a time when all these movements were distinctly unpopular.
The Sargent children all went to school at Leicester Academy, then a flourishing institution, where Mr. Sargent later in the in- tervals of his college career became a teacher.
As a school-boy, he disliked mathematics, loved mischief and had a fondness for the orations of Clay and Webster. He developed a
GEORGE HENRY SARGENT
genuine taste for Latin and in after years as a busy merchant, he often carried in traveling a little volume of Caesar and Cicero. He was always glad to help his own children with their Virgil and Horace, and remained a strong advocate of the value of the classics in education.
During his school-boy years, his father became a manufacturer of cotton-cards or " Card-clothing " as the industry was termed, and built a factory at Leicester.
In the lad's vacations he helped at the factory as he had helped on the farm, and thus acquired the foundation of his commercial training.
In 1849 he entered Harvard College where for two years he fol- lowed the regular course and then, deciding that he would follow the law as a profession, went to the Harvard Law School where he spent a year. Although he did not finish his undergraduate course, his dearly loved college later gave him his Baccalaureate degree as a member of the distinguished class of 1853.
. Before he completed his law course, his elder brother, Joseph Bradford Sargent, already a pioneer in the Hardware business, persuaded him to abandon the project of a professional career, and join him in New York City where they started the little firm of " Sargent Brother & Co."
To this enterprise, he gave his whole heart and devoted himself to it with sagacity and perseverance.
Up and down the Mississippi River on ancient steamboats and through the Southern and Central Western States the enthusiastic young salesman went in the interests of this business, acquiring that genial talent for remembering names and faces and personal characteristics which helped to make him a successful merchant.
He did not guess in those early days that his firm would later occupy a huge group of buildings covering a floor space of over twenty acres, employing four thousand workers, and turning out more than sixty thousand different patterns of hardware, but he was determined to make good by hard work, and his Puritan and Pilgrim traditions urged him forward until he became the much loved dean of the hardware trade, the president of Sargent & Co., in New York and, after the death of his equally enterprising brother, in 1907, the president of the extensive plant in New Haven, Conn.
On October 15th, 1855, as a happy result of a romance begun in the Leicester Academy school-days, he married in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Sarah, daughter of the Hon. John H. and Eliza Ann (Swift) Shaw and grand-daughter of John and Deborah (Gardner) Shaw, and of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Swain) Swift all of Nantucket, and a descendant of William Swyft of Sandwich who
GEORGE HENRY SARGENT
came from England to Watertown, Massachusetts in 1630 and of Tristram Coffin, who came to America in 1642.
Three children were born of this marriage, Leicester, Rupert and Emily, the latter now the wife of Wilfred Lewis of Philadelphia.
In 1883 the tragic death of Leicester and Rupert Sargent in the loss of the yacht " Mystery " brought to their father the great sorrow of his life, and softened his heart to all who came to him for help in poverty and affliction.
He did not allow this personal grief to interfere with the duties of his increasing business and became also a member of the Chamber of Commerce, president of the Hardware Club, vice-president of the Fidelity Trust Company and a member of the Union League, Harvard, and University Clubs, all of New York.
His social and business intercourse with his fellowmen was marked by a sincere personal interest in their affairs and an irrepressible sense of humor which made him a charmingly original companion.
Although he delighted in foreign travel he was a staunch up- holder of American ideas and his home showed the unostentatious comfort and dignified simplicity of his New England traditions.
He was a Unitarian in religion and his politics believed devoutly in the tenets of the Republican party, sweeping aside in a masterful manner all arguments contrary to his own convictions.
His dominant personality and unusual endowment of strength and good looks made him a noticeable figure in his generation.
His word was as good as his bond and his name stood for the strictest business integrity and justice.
He died in his eighty-ninth year at his home, Number 2 West 50th Street in New York and was buried at Leicester, Massachu- setts.
When his funeral procession passed through his native town the flags there hung at half-mast. The church bells tolled for him and the school children dropped flowers into his open grave.
He had always loved to go back to Leicester in the summer, and " be a boy again " and in spite of sixty-six years of life in New York, the home of his affection was always in the old hill-town where he now lies " gathered to his fathers " after a long life enriched by much joy and sorrow and a great capacity for loyalty and self- expression.
Besides his daughter, three grandchildren survive him: Wilfred Sargent Lewis, Millicent Lewis, and Leicester Sargent Lewis. The first-named left Yale College to volunteer for the service, and is now with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
QUINCY ADAMS SHAW
Q UINCY ADAMS SHAW, capitalist, financier, and late president of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, February 8, 1825, and died there June 12, 1908. His parents were Robert Gould Shaw, a native of Gouldsboro, Maine, and Elizabeth Willard Parkman Shaw. The surname, Robert Gould, is the name of the founder of Gouldsboro, the town on Frenchman's Bay which Robert Gould and Francis Shaw undertook to develop before the Revolutionary War.
The Shaw family, long representative of that which is foremost in America in culture, social leadership, and public spirit, is also typically American.
Robert Gould Shaw, a nephew of the subject of this sketch, whose death occurred in leading his negro regiment in the assault on Fort Wagner, North Carolina, in 1863, is commemorated by the Shaw memorial opposite the State House, Boston.
Quincy Adams Shaw received his collegiate education in Harvard University and was graduated in the class of 1845. After his grad- uation he traveled extensively, and made a trip across the country with the American historian and author, Francis Parkman.
Mr. Shaw became interested in mining about 1860. The Calu- met and Hecla mining properties are copper mines situated upon the southern shores of Lake Superior and are regarded as the richest in copper ore of any in the world. These mines were dynamized and brought to their wonderful issue under the engineer- ing skill and mangement of Mr. Shaw's brother-in-law, Professor Alexander Agassiz, zoologist and geologist. In 1871 Mr. Shaw was instrumental in organizing the Calumet and Hecla Mining Com- pany of which he became president, and remained in that official capacity until about ten years before his death.
Although this had been his chief connection, his interests in other directions were wide-spread and important. He served as director in numerous large industrial and financial institutions, and at the time of his decease was a director in the Lockwood Manu- facturing Company. In these occupations Mr. Shaw found plenty of work, and he performed all of it with the zeal and thoroughness that were characteristic of him in all his undertaking.
Mr. Shaw took a practical and keen interest in philanthropic work, even though he shrank from the appreciative gaze of the
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QUINCY ADAMS SHAW
world upon his good works. They were so many and so hidden from view, that those who knew him best even were never aware of their full value and extent.
Mr. Shaw was married to Pauline the daughter of the noted Swiss scientist and naturalist, Louis Agassiz, and his second wife, Elizabeth (Carey) Agassiz. Four children were born of this mar- riage: Quincy Adams Shaw, Junior, Second, vice-president of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, Robert Gould Shaw, Mrs. Henry Pratt McKean of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Mrs. L. Carteret Fenno of Boston.
Mrs. Shaw and her husband were known as the foster mother and father of the kindergarten schools of Boston, Mass. In 1870 the Shaws opened the first free public kindergarten in the country. At a later date they opened two classes for the summer months, at their own expense, one in Jamaica Plain and the other in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the following year two more were opened, and during the first few weeks of their opening, Mrs. Shaw presided over each.
In 1883 Mr. and Mrs. Shaw were maintaining three kinder- gartens, in Boston, Brookline and Cambridge, which continued until 1887, when they induced the School committee of Boston to take over the work. And the indigent people of Boston, whose children have free access to that department of the school system, owe that inestimable privilege to the wise benevolence and en- lightened abilities of Mr. and Mrs. Quincy Adams Shaw.
After this accomplishment they turned their attention and de- voted their time to the establishment of day nurseries in various sections of the city.
Mr. Shaw had, like many others, a fondness for country life, and maintained his residence the year around in the old fashioned mansion on the borders of the Parkway bounding Brookline and Jamaica Plain.
Among the citizens whom Boston might gladly put forth as types of the best citizenship, in probity, enterprise, and culture, the figure of Quincy Adams Shaw stands conspicuous.
As financier and as philanthropist he held a place of especial honor. His mission in life was the performance of constant acts that alleviated and reduced human suffering, and the manner in which that service was rendered, modestly, abundantly, and with no desire for publicity remains a permanent memorial of Christian service.
ROBERT GOULD SHAW, 2D
R OBERT GOULD SHAW, 2D, was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, June 16, 1872. He is the son of Quincy Adams Shaw and Pauline (Agassiz) Shaw. The father was a financier and President of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Com- pany. The Calumet and Hecla properties are copper mines upon the southern shores of Lake Superior and are regarded as the richest of any in the world.
The mother of Robert Gould Shaw was Pauline Agassiz, daughter of the noted naturalist, Louis Agassiz, and his second wife, Elizabeth (Cary) Agassiz. Robert Gould Shaw, 2d, is a cousin of the Robert Gould Shaw, whose heroic death in leading his negro regiment in the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863, is commemo- rated by the Shaw memorial opposite the State House, Boston. The prænomen, Robert Gould, is the name of the founder of Goulds- boro, Maine, a town on Frenchman's Bay, which Robert Gould and Francis Shaw undertook to develop before the Revolution held up their venture and wiped out the investment of Francis Shaw.
The educational pathway of young Shaw was uneventful. He graduated from the Hopkins School, entered Harvard and in due time was graduated. He entered the office of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company and has continued to further its affairs. The care of his own large property has, however, of late years been his chief business care. He has always been fond of animals and of nature. His interest has not taken the direction of the Scientific investigator but is a human liking for live things, their ways, their care and training.
Whatever may be the truth about heredity in general, in the case of Robert Gould Shaw, 2d, his tastes and occupations com- bine the paternal tendencies toward finance, and the naturalist instinct inherit from his mother's side. While active in the con- duct of a great business he has turned his attention toward farming in something more than amateur fashion.
The problems of business involved in successful agriculture are complicated and serious enough to try fully, and to provoke to the highest exercise any capacity inherited from a long line of eminent
Robert Gould Shaw 2nd
ROBERT GOULD SHAW, 2D
business ancestors, while the touch with all nature, still and ani- mated, should be a satisfaction of all the instincts inherited from his distinguished naturalist grandfather. The estate which he has named Bowlder Farm, and which has a huge bowlder marking the entrance to the winding avenue leading from the highway to his house seven hundred yards away is situated on Oak Hill three miles from Newton Centre. There Mr. Shaw is developing a stock farm. While the farm is laid out artistically it is also laid out economically. He has for many years been well known for his blooded horses and polo ponies. He has been an enthusiast in the polo game, a pop- ular member of the Myopia Hunt and the New York Hunt Clubs. His horses have taken prizes in the Boston Horse Show. He has also on his farm a brood of Shetland ponies, intelligent, educated creatures. He has pigs which are curiosities, being of the variety called mule footed from their solid, instead of cloven hoofs. They are said to be immune to hog cholera. Mr. Shaw is taking special pride and pleasure in a herd of registered milch cows and a model stock barn. The cows are the best strain of Guernsey.
Mr. Shaw says of them :- " My cattle, - they pay. I sell some milk. Farming pays, - farming in general I mean. It's just a question of carrying it on economically, - just making the thing as efficient as it's possible to make it." He declares that his farm earns regular dividends. While Mr. Shaw thus vindicates his business sagacity in conducting a farm that pays he allows him- self the luxury of a deer park of twenty-five acres of woodland and glade and a herd of deer. Just outside the park is a big black bear,
caged. In an adjacent ravine is a fox run with captive foxes. Ducks and pheasants are among his feathered charges.
Mr. Shaw is a member of the Country and the Somerset Clubs. He is a Republican in politics. His church relations are with the Unitarians.
August 27, 1897, he married Nancy Langhorne. One child, a boy, was the fruit of this marriage. February 6, 1903, Mr. Shaw was married a second time to Mary, daughter of George and Emma Hannington. Four boys have been born of this marriage, - Gould, George Alexander, Louis Agassiz and Paul Agassiz.
ROBERT GOULD SHAW
R OBERT GOULD SHAW is a descendant of a family which includes many of the famous men of the New England states. The first ancestor in this country was John Shaw of Scotland, who came to America in 1640. Shaw is an old English word, denoting a grove of small trees, and was first used in refer- ence to persons in the expression " atte shawe " or " at the shaw " and finally adopted as a surname by the person living "at the shaw." Mr. Shaw's grandfather was Robert Gould Shaw, an old time Boston merchant of noted sagacity and business acumen, and another relative of the same name was his cousin, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was killed at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in the Civil War, while in command of the 54th Regiment of Massa- chusetts Volunteers. A portrait of him hangs in Memorial Hall at Harvard, and a bas-relief, designed and executed by St. Gaudens, representing Shaw riding at the head of his regiment, was placed on Boston Common, opposite the State House in 1898.
The subject of our sketch was born in Parkman, Maine, May 6, 1850, the son of Samuel Parkman and Hannah Buck Shaw. His grandparents were Robert Gould Shaw and Elizabeth W. Parkman on the paternal side, and on the maternal side Levisa Barnes and Joshua Buck.
He received a good education and was brought up in the best environment. Upon completing his preparatory course for college he entered Harvard University and graduated in 1869. Later, in 1872, he received the degree of A. M.
Mr. Shaw has made a remarkable collection of theatrical memo- rabilia, a priceless collection, even better than that which the British Museum owns. This collection Mr. Shaw has presented to the Widener Library of Harvard University. While in college Mr. Shaw took a great interest in the stage, seeing all the best players and keeping himself well informed on everything that related to current stage history. He began to collect books, prints, playbills and theatrical letters soon after leaving Harvard. The gift to the
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Roby Shau
ROBERT GOULD SHAW
library includes more than thirty thousand prints, an equal number of photographs and a quarter of a million playbills. The auto- graph letters alone number more than five thousand.
It has been a custom with Mr. Shaw to visit England, France and Germany from time to time and while there he has often found rarities that would have escaped all but the most indefatigable collector. He has always been exceedingly fond of books and pictures.
Mr. Shaw is a member of the Harvard Club of New York, and the Somerset Club of Boston.
September 14, 1875, he married Isabella, daughter of Hollis H. and Isabella Hunnewell. There are five children: Susan Welles (Mrs. John C. Lee), Robert Gould, Jr., Hollis Hunnewell, Theo- dore Lyman and Arthur Hunnewell Shaw.
A man of scholarly tastes and attainments, Mr. Shaw possesses a hearty and genial manner, which makes him popular in all gather- ings of a social nature. On both sides of the family he comes of a sturdy ancestry and has lived and expressed their principles during his life. He is a prominent resident of Boston.
ABRAHAM SHUMAN
A BRAHAM SHUMAN was born May 31, 1839, in Germany, and died at his home in Boston, Massachusetts, June 26, 1918. When he was a small child his parents came to this country and settled in Newburg, New York, in which place he attended the public schools. His parents reared their family in habits of industry and frugality and did not forget to inculcate by precept and example the principles of robust morality. When not at school young Shuman labored on a neighboring farm until he was thirteen years old, when he began work in a retail clothing house. There by close application and observant faculties he be- gan to store the knowledge by which he made his success in life.
At the age of sixteen he started in business for himself in Provi- dence, Rhode Island. After four years of hard work in that city he became dissatisfied with the opportunities there afforded and came to Roxbury, where he opened a clothing store at Vernon and Washington Streets, and found a sphere of activity better suited to his ability.
While still retaining the Roxbury store, in 1869, he entered into partnership with Mr. John Phillips, under the name of Phillips, Shuman and Company, for a wholesale business in boys' clothing. This concern prospered greatly, but in the disastrous fire of No- vember 9, 1872, the business was destroyed.
Immediately after this calamity the firm secured a building on Washington Street occupying what afterward became a portion of the site of the present great establishment of A. Shuman and Company. At this place the firm opened a retail department for the sale of boys' clothing. In 1876 Mr. Phillips retired from the business, and Mr. Shuman branched out into more extensive enter- prises. The immense establishment at the corner of Washington and Summer Streets, denominated the "Shuman Corner," is the result of Mr. Shuman's business energy.
As an employer Mr. Shuman proved ideal, disciplining his em- ployees with firmness and strength, and helping them with tact, sympathy, democracy, and brotherliness. His guiding principle was that of their unity with the Company and among themselves, and he succeeded in inculcating a unique spirit of loyalty and co- operation. He was always ready to advise and assist others,
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ABRAHAM SHUMAN
especially those in his own employ, and he aided them in organizing a mutual Benefit Relief Association. His work among his em- ployees was rewarded by an efficient and loyal service that rarely prevails in the mercantile world. Mr. Shuman was an admirable type of the progressive, honest, enterprising merchant.
Even so full, fruitful and thorough a business career is not an adequate measure of his activities and achievement. He was public-spirited and always ready to devote his energies to the best interests and material welfare of Boston. He was a founder of the Boston Merchants' Association, of which he was vice-president for many years; and a member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce. He served in Mayor Quincy's Advisory Cabinet on the Board of Consultation on Municipal matters in 1896. He was a director in the Commonwealth Trust Company, the United States Trust Com- pany, the Manufacturers National Bank, and the Puritan Trust Company.
For thirty-three years Mr. Shuman was connected with the Boston City Hospital, being president of the Board of Trustees for twenty-six years. Under his direction the South Department or hospital for contagious diseases was constructed, as well as many other new buildings and additions, thus doubling the capacity of the institution and largely increasing its value to patients and the medical sciences. To his untiring zeal and earnest effort much of the success and prestige of the hospital is due. It was also through his instrumentality that the Relief Station in Haymarket Square was built and equipped.
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mr. Shuman's appointment as trustee, he was paid a high tribute by leaders in political and business life and was presented with a silver loving cup, inscribed thus: " To Abraham Shuman, by his fellow citizens, in friendship to him and in recognition of his loyal civic spirit, and especially to commemorate his twenty-five years' devoted service as trustee of the Boston City Hospital."
Mr. Shuman was called upon to fill many positions of public service and private trust. He was one of the trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a member of the Ancient and Honor- able Artillery Company, and in 1888 was chairman of the Finance Committee of arrangements on the occasion of the 250th anniver- sary of this old military company. He was president of the " Fifteen Club " of Boston, which had its origin with the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; was one of the organizers of the John Boyle O'Reilly Club, and served as its president; and one of the founders and for many years had been perpetual president
ABRAHAM SHUMAN
of the Atlantic Conference, composed of Bostonians who traveled to Europe during the summer. He was a member of the Exchange Club, the Boston Athletic Association and the Boston Art Club.
On November 3, 1861, Mr. Shuman was married to Miss Hettie Lang. She died in 1904. The following year he gave a sum of money to the Women's Charity Club for use in the aid of needy nurses, and in 1906 in her memory he provided Floating Hospital excursions for mothers and children. He is survived by three sons Edwin A., Sidney E., and George H. Shuman, and three daughters, Mrs. August Weil, Mrs. Alexander Steinert and Mrs. I. A. Rat- shesky, all of Boston. His youngest daughter, Lilian Gertrude Shuman, a gifted writer of verse, died in 1913.
As a public-spirited citizen, a wise counsellor, a man eminent in the business world, a lover of humanity, happy in doing good, Boston was incalculably benefited by Mr. Shuman's life, and he will be greatly missed by those who had the pleasure of association with him and profited by his judgment and advice. He was looked upon as one of the leading citizens, and the highest office of the city could have been his for the asking had he been willing to enter political life. The great and enduring usefulness of the Boston City Hospital is a tribute to his genius and will remain a monu- ment to his memory.
Mr. Shuman possessed the happy faculty of making and re- taining warm friends. No one in the city had a wider circle of acquaintances. He will be widely mourned, for he was the finest type of the New England merchant and philanthropist.
Governor McCall paid the following tribute to him:
" In the passing of Mr. Shuman we all have suffered a distinct loss. Out of the sterling qualities with which he was so richly endowed he was ever ready to contribute in full measure to the cause of humanity. A respected and valued citizen, a real Ameri- can, and a humanitarian of whom we have all been proud has left us, but the influence of his life will long remain."
Lieutenant Governor Coolidge said:
" Mr. Shuman was a citizen of the finest type. We have perhaps known him best as a philanthropist, and in that he has been dis- tinctive. His philanthropy has been as varied and extensive as it has been wise and helpful. We have all lost a friend. The State and the city have been honored by him. It is proper that the State and city should in mindfulness of that do honor to him now that he has left us."
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